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Right, but the mods here don't allow heated debates on controversial subjects. They view them as pointless or even harmful. Further, they seem to have accepted
by dionidium 9y ago
Right, but the mods here don't allow heated debates on controversial subjects. They view them as pointless or even harmful. Further, they seem to have accepted a sort of broken windows theory of moderation that says that any such discussion has to be stopped, lest it leak out into other threads.
I think that's disastrously wrong on all counts.
- tepe1 9y agoThe goal of such "controversial discussions" is always to silence the minorities. The goal is not discussion or debate but normalization of extreme views. The mechanism here is very simple. A "controversial subject" is proposed like, say, "Women are inferior to men when it comes to X." The content of this discussion is not relevant. Its existence is enough to fulfill the true purpose: drive women away from the forum. It is abundantly clear that women, or any other minority, will rightly avoid any community that entertains their inferiority. What's amusing about this debate is that all the heroic defenders of "free speech" have a very limited and very self-serving definition of free speech. You will never see these people argue for making a particular forum more welcoming or hospitable to minorities. You will never see arguments for diversity. This would introduce real diversity of opinion which is very much not wanted. But even though they despise real diversity, by defending free speech of the most extreme ilk they do at least get the nice virtue points in their mind with the benefit of ensuring everbody in the forum is pretty much exactly like them.